It has been noted elsewhere that an idea is acknowledged to be creative if it is novel, or surprising and adaptive. So how does that fit with education's desire to measure student performance against fixed, consistent and predicted learning outcomes? This study explores practical measures and theoretical constructs that address the dearth of…

This article offers a critical discussion of the role of the business plan in current enterprise educational practice. In addition to reviewing recent work that considers the "for" and "against" arguments about the use of business plans in higher education, the authors suggest that the context of student learning is largely…

Entrepreneurship, as an important aspect of modern economic thought, is often described as facilitating innovation, job creation and national prosperity. Given the current economic conditions in Europe, entrepreneurship growth and small business development are seen as synonymous with economic recovery and growth. Consequently, in recent years…

Over the last three decades in the UK, successive Conservative and Labour governments have implemented policies and initiatives aimed at widening access to higher education. During the same period, entrepreneurship education has emerged as an important aspect of higher education provision, as it has in other industrially developed and developing…

Recent research suggests that important issues are emerging among enterprise educators in higher education institutions (HEIs). This paper examines four key areas of debate. The first of these is the assessment of entrepreneurship ideas and related activities (Pittaway and Cope, 2007). Penaluna and Penaluna (2008, 2009a, b), for example, focus on…

A growing body of research evaluates various aspects of entrepreneurship education (such as curriculum, delivery and assessment) and links it to outcomes in terms of both the number and quality of entrepreneurs entering an economy. There is, however, a marked paucity of empirically rigorous research appraising the impact of entrepreneurship…

This article introduces a special issue of "Industry and Higher Education," which focuses on entrepreneurship education and its impact on industry and organizational competitiveness, both in the UK and elsewhere. The articles in this issue are illustrative of the rich and varied conceptual and contextual underpinning and the methods and…

In this article the authors explore the characteristics and nature of entrepreneurship education for the creative disciplines and suggest links with the entrepreneurial traits of creative discipline graduates. Reporting on a combination of specialist literature, case studies of graduates and a "snapshot" analysis of relevant job adverts for…

Small ethnic minority businesses make an important contribution to the UK economy, and this is reflected in their rapid growth over the last decade. A considerable proportion of the growth in new venture creation can be attributed to ethnic minority graduates, who increasingly embark on entrepreneurship as a rewarding and fulfilling alternative to…

In contemporary China, there are two far-reaching developments that impact directly on graduate employment: (a) a highly entrepreneurial and rapidly growing small business sector and (b) a rapidly expanding higher education sector. Paradoxically, while the small business sector continues to suffer from acute skills shortages, new graduates are…

The social, economic and political systems of former communist countries have faced considerable changes since the late 1980s. Most countries in Eastern and Central Europe have undergone their own individual brand of transition from a centrally planned, command system to a more or less liberalized, Western-style market economy. Many observers…